A few years ago, police Sergeant Brenda Shelton found herself in crisis mode, a dark night of the soul. A thirty-two plus year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, she had been with the Child Abuse Squad since 2006, and had seen and heard things no sane and compassionate person could witness and then easily discard from their memory.

Shelton says that there were many times “when I’d stand outside for hours at night, looking to heaven for an answer”, too exhausted to imagine how she could continue her work protecting the city’s abused and neglected children. But then the phone would ring and she’d have to go back out onto the streets because her supervision and calm wisdom were needed to intervene in a child abuse situation.

In her seventh year as a police officer, the last three and half as a supervisor—she began her career in 1982—she transferred to the Youth Division as an Operations Unit Supervisor, and then four years later moved into the Missing Persons Squad, a part of the Youth Division. She served in that squad for thirteen and a half years. Later she was appointed to the Child Abuse Squad, leading to her work protecting the city’s most vulnerable.

Sgt. Shelton and her Child Abuse Squad team

When asked if men and women handled the stresses of the job differently, she said that the situations encountered eventually put a tremendous strain on every officer she’d ever worked with. She recounted the story of a fellow officer in the division, a young man who was well respected by fellow officers and jurists alike, attentive to detail, conscientious and meticulous in his follow-up to the cases assigned to him. On one of his cases, two little girls who were sisters went missing, along with their parents. It wasn’t discovered until a few years later that the girls had been murdered by their parents. When the gruesome details surrounding their deaths finally came to light, Sergeant Shelton found the young officer crying inconsolably, literally brought to his knees by the news. He told her, then and there, that he had had enough. He couldn’t do the job anymore. Shelton says that, inevitably, the job created a Pandora’s Box of complex and powerful emotions, and that if these emotions weren’t released in healthy ways, they were going to come out in potentially self-destructive ways; self-destructive to the officer, and to their colleagues, friends and family.

Sergeant Shelton had to search back in her memory to find some lighter moments on the job. But in response to a question about the importance of women’s calming influence in law enforcement, she recounted an episode when she and her patrol partner at the time were called to assist another officer with a drunk driver, passed out in his car, which was crashed against a street curb, the driver’s foot still on the gas pedal. A passerby—a man Shelton describes as being over seven feet tall—tried to intervene in the arrest. The lumbering giant kept muttering threateningly, “You don’t need to be treating him that a way.” Shelton’s male partner and the passerby nearly came to blows until she risked her own safety by squeezing in between the two men standing toe to toe. She calmly reassured the Good Samaritan by saying, “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt him. We’re just going to help him.” She kept talking to him until he stepped away, but not before grumbling to her partner, “Okay. But he shouldn’t be treating him that a way.” The other officer later admitted to Shelton that, without her intervention, the situation would have escalated, possibly to a lethal degree.

After almost eight years working with physically and sexually abused children, many of them murdered, and close to an emotional shutdown, Shelton says she prayed for a sign to either stay with the job, or leave it behind and go on with her life. Shortly afterward, she got a call from a man who had been a long-time mentor, a retired Colonel in his eighties whom she had known from her time at University of Southern Mississippi. They hadn’t seen each other in a long while, but they had stayed in touch. She told him of her anguished dilemma, and he told her, “You have dedicated over thirty-two years of your life to this career. It’s time for you to go home.”

Receiving her 30 yr service pin from Chief David Brown

A short time later, she took her paperwork to personnel, announcing her intention to retire, which she did in 2015.

When asked what success looked like as a law enforcement officer in the DPD Child Abuse Squad, Sergeant Brenda Shelton answered that each day when they went to work, they went with the knowledge that they would save the life of at least one child that day. There could be no greater calling. . .

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/09/18/wonder-women-dallas-sergeant-brenda-shelton/feed/6Wonder Women of Dallas: Marilyn Hayhttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/08/11/wonder-women-dallas-marilyn-hay/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/08/11/wonder-women-dallas-marilyn-hay/#respondFri, 11 Aug 2017 15:09:26 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4697This fresh-faced cadet was only one of twelve women IN TOTAL to be assigned as patrol officers with the Dallas Police Department in 1974. A thirty plus-year veteran, Detective Hay ...

This fresh-faced cadet was only one of twelve women IN TOTAL to be assigned as patrol officers with the Dallas Police Department in 1974.

A thirty plus-year veteran, Detective Hay saw just about everything there was to see working in a field dominated by Alpha males, including harassment, bullying, and intimidation. She’d had a sergeant order another rookie to put her in a choke hold during defense training because he’d been instructed to “get rid of her”; another sergeant told her outright that she should be home, barefoot and pregnant, and not taking up the positions meant for men; fellow officers once taunted a mean drunk while she was arresting him so they could watch the resulting punch-up with a female cop. She managed to overpower the man, dragging him into a holding cell. Her nickname became Viking because of her strength and height.

It was argued at the time, and still is in many professions, that there was nothing done to her that hadn’t been done to “the guys.” The ribbing, the kidding, the name-calling, which is a part of every frat house and boys club in America. But the prevailing darker truth was that the sexual harassment and blackmail, which was a constant threat to job security, was held over the female officers’ heads. On her first week of duty during roll call an officer asked, loudly, if she was a virgin. She quipped that he’d never find out, but she said it was a rude awakening, and set the overall tone for her early career.

There other practical difficulties: hair had to be as short as the men’s, uniforms and vests cut and designed for a man’s body (try going to the bathroom quickly when you have to take off your underbelt, your “sam brown”, holding your gun holster, ammo pouches, and handcuff case, etc., 4 belt keepers that held the two belts together, undo a side zipper, and pull the entire trousers down around your ankles).

There were some humorous occasions. Once, when she had volunteered to sit as an honor guard in a funeral home for a deceased officer, a fellow cop brought her something to eat, telling her where she could go in the building to get a soda. Then he left. When Officer Hay followed his instructions to where she’d been told the soda machine was, she found herself in the embalming room, with a lot of other bodies. A few minutes later, she heard what sounded like organ music coming from another room. As far as she knew, she was the only one left (alive) at the funeral home. Her nerves on fire, she went searching for the source of the eerie sounds, only to find the officer she’d thought had left gleefully playing organ music pre-recorded for funerals.

For over a decade she worked as a trainer for other officers and in the traffic division as an accident investigator for all the major and fatality accidents for the entire city. She came to be well-regarded by the officers “on the scene”, but resented by the other A&I officers for her attention to detail in her reports.

In 1990, Officer Hay became Detective Hay, assigned to her home station of Northwest Division. She counted herself fortunate to be trained by a female detective who was supportive, having coming up the ranks facing many of the same difficulties. The most difficult part of her job, however, proved to be balancing her detective work with raising her son as a single mom. She was criticized by her male officers for taking any time off for doctor’s visits or school related events, until she pointed out to them that they had stay-at-home wives taking care of their own kids.

When I asked Detective Hay what her motto might have been for her career, she responded, “I have always worked with the attitude that I had to do the job twice as good as the men to be thought of as half as good.”

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/08/11/wonder-women-dallas-marilyn-hay/feed/0Dallas, A Literary Awakeninghttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/04/01/dallas-literary-awakening/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/04/01/dallas-literary-awakening/#commentsSat, 01 Apr 2017 14:36:16 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4692I grew up in Dallas, and the joke my father always used to tell about the city was this: What’s the difference between yogurt and Dallas? Yogurt is the one ...

I grew up in Dallas, and the joke my father always used to tell about the city was this: What’s the difference between yogurt and Dallas? Yogurt is the one with the live culture. He had lived in New York for a time after the war, hand picked by composer Richard Rodgers to sing in his Broadway musical South Pacific, so he knew a thing or two about a more expansively cultured life.

In the 1960’s there were a few museums and art galleries, nestled between the towering banking and commerce buildings. A sophisticated night out in Big D, though, usually did not include a trip to a museum or to a play or musical theater, but rather to a local restaurant; inevitably, they fell into two categories, family-style meateries, and date-night meateries. There were few public area parks, and good luck finding a sidewalk in the suburbs, because, let’s face it, Dallas-ites didn’t walk. Not unless we were forced to. We got in our cars and drove to wherever it was we were going, even if it was to the Piggly Wiggly a few blocks away. So there was no street life in the modern, urbane sense, and there was nothing approaching a café society.

If you were a reader, besides the library, there were few bookshops, although there was always the Dallas Morning News to grouse about over your Post Toasties. If there was a “literary scene” in Dallas, I was too young at the time to have noticed.

But I was a reader, and devoured everything I could get my hands on. It seems I had read every book in the children’s section of the library by the time I was ten, and, because I was considered too young to read novels written by Salinger and Fitzgerald, my mother had to check them out using her own library card. Not only was I a precocious reader, reading everything from Shakespeare to Milton to Orwell, I also loved books about the American West. The closest thing we have to our own Greek legends of heroes and heroic deeds lies in the Western novel. My father had given me books written by J. Frank Dobie, Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey. The writing was sometimes atrocious, but not the towering themes of Mankind pitted against Unforgiving Nature.

Even though I was a constant reader of books, it wasn’t until I went to the University of Texas at Austin that I became aware of a literary community; students who not only read the accepted classics, but championed the more exotic, banned books. I could finally read Henry Miller without having to lock myself in the bathroom, hiding from the prying eyes of parents and younger siblings. I fell firmly in lock step with the lofty ideals of college literary life in the mid- 1970’s—that to have a true democracy, its citizens must have total freedom of expression through both the written and the spoken word. Wherein the monsters of our minds could be slain on the blank page, as opposed to slaying them on some foreign battlefield.

But, I soon discovered that I had gone from hiding one class of literature to another. While it was perfectly acceptable on campus to carry, like a badge of honor, the works of Betty Friedan and Erica Jong, it was anathema to carry around a novel by Katherine Anne Porter. You were skating on thin ice to be reading Jack London, and I was the only person I knew who had read Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. It wasn’t literature. Not yet, at any rate.

It was in college where I got the idea that I wanted to become a writer. My father, in the arts himself for a while, was also a practical man and convinced me to switch my major from literature to business. I could always write as an avocation, he told me, and have enough money to eat in the meantime.

After college I moved to New York, and ended up living and working there in various commercial enterprises for twenty years. It took me two decades to summon the will, and the resources, to resurrect the idea of wanting to be a full-time writer. But I had continued to read, everything, and anything: historical novels, biographies, science fiction and fantasy, including Western literature, reading the now-iconic works by Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. Suddenly, Western literature was cool again, albeit through novels with a decidedly darker, more realistic bent than their predecessors.

When I moved back to Dallas in 2000, I discovered that Texas was indeed becoming a place of live culture, with expanding museums, original theater, and a burgeoning literary scene. It seemed that every suburban neighborhood had several book clubs. Since my first book was published in 2008, I’ve spoken to more than 200 book clubs, most of them in and around the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. And bookstores—until the Internet Darth Vader gained prominence— were always full of browsing readers. Notable Texas, or Texas-themed, writers, such as Ben Fountain, Joe Lansdale, Elizabeth Crook, Oscar Casares, Philipp Meyer and Sandra Cisneros were gaining national, and even international attention and acclaim. The Western novel had grown to encompass the vagaries and complexities of the twenty-first century. Suddenly, it seemed, it was cool again to be a Texas writer.

Within a few years, Dallas had its own cultural renaissance in the literary field by bucking the ominous trend away from brick and mortar stores, and bravely planting the literary flag, creating the spaces and the opportunities for readers and writers to come together for an exchange of ideas. Independent bookstores, such as The Wild Detectives and Deep Vellum Books were doing more than just selling books. They were creating the new literary salons, an environment that encouraged the discourse of poetry, prose, music and art. They have continued to support the artistic endeavors, not only of established writers, but of a whole new crop of Texas writers such as Merritt Tierce, Sanderia Faye, Manuel Gonzalez, and many, many others. These bookstores have been truly egalitarian, embracing writers of all ages, all literary disciplines, all backgrounds.

The Dallas Museum of Art, Arts and Letters Live program has brought the best authors in the world to their packed auditoriums for literary talks. Widely diverse writers, such as novelist Emma Donoghue, non-fiction author Eric Larson, and radical street poet Kate Tempest, have spoken on their stages. They also host a Texas Bound series, featuring actors who read aloud short stories and selections from novels written by Texas authors.

Dallas is no longer a city without live culture, without a literary scene. It is a big, little town that continues to germinate and support its homegrown talent, as singular and unique as the citizens who call it home. It is a city of contrasts, a rich cultural soup that will continue to provide endless possibilities for writers to draw upon, from cowboys to bankers, Confederate re-enactors to society doyens, drug dealers to mega-churches, from the sublime to the ridiculous, the homely to the exotic. Big D has it all. Even yogurt.

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2017/04/01/dallas-literary-awakening/feed/1Dallas By Night – Bishop Arts Districthttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/07/27/dallas-by-night-bishop-arts-district/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/07/27/dallas-by-night-bishop-arts-district/#respondMon, 27 Jul 2015 20:16:14 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4651 The Bishop Arts District was originally developed as a collection of warehouses and shops in the 1920’s. A decade later the trolley stop along Davis became ...

The Bishop Arts District was originally developed as a collection of warehouses and shops in the 1920’s. A decade later the trolley stop along Davis became the busiest in Dallas. The rise of the shopping mall in the 1960’s and ’70’s, though, brought about a decline in local business, presaging the exodus of people from the community. City buses replaced the streetcars, neighborhood crime rose and the district fell into decline.

In the 1980’s an urban visionary named Jim Lake started buying up the run down storefronts and property with an eye to reclaiming and salvaging an important part of Dallas history. More recent renovations to store fronts and homes have revitalized the area, but it’s often the murals, brick pavers and rustic street signs that have allowed the area to keep its charm. The restaurants are good and plentiful, and the shops–many of them filled with clothes, jewelry and art made by local artisans—stay open past dark.

In mid-July, Bishop Arts residents hosted their 6th annual Bastille on Bishop street festival, a celebration of its early ties to the French “La Reunion” settlement. In 1855, when Dallas was only 14 years old, a group of 200 mostly French settlers led by Victor Considerant made their way from Houston by ox cart to setup a “Utopian Community” based on the socialist ideas of Charles Fourier in what is now North Oak Cliff. These French citizens brought to Dallas its first piano and beer brewery making Big D an infinitely more fun place to live.

Detective Betty says about BAD: My go-to french food in the past was usually a french fry, but I’ve been schooled by my more cultured friends to appreciate true Gallic cuisine and my favorite restaurant lately is Boulevardier on N. Bishop Avenue. Their Hangar Steak Frites will make you swoon. If you’re not a carnivore like me they have seafood galore. And did I mention their wine list? C’est formidable.

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/07/27/dallas-by-night-bishop-arts-district/feed/0Dallas By Day – The Wild Detectives Book Storehttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/29/dallas-by-day-the-wild-detectives-book-store/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/29/dallas-by-day-the-wild-detectives-book-store/#respondMon, 29 Jun 2015 17:49:04 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4639 What’s cool, local to Big D and good for the body, mind and spirit: one of the best little book stores in the West (or anywhere for that matter), ...

What’s cool, local to Big D and good for the body, mind and spirit: one of the best little book stores in the West (or anywhere for that matter), The Wild Detectives. In February of 2014 owners Paco Vique and Javier Garcia del Moral opened their long-imagined store, including a coffee and wine bar in a beautifully refurbished bungalow in Oak Cliff. Originally built in the 1940’s, the space has hosted authors–local, national and international–musicians, performance artists, film festivals and even the occasional Shakespearian troop of actors.

Nestled in a quiet neighborhood, just a few blocks from the burgeoning shops and restaurants of Oak Cliff, the ever-present and welcoming general manager, Carlos Guajardo, oversees curating the eclectic selection of books, as well as organizing the events. Carlos was picked by the Dallas Observer among the top 100 creative people in Dallas, naming him The Book Guy!

Recently, I got to share a book signing with my wonderfully talented Dallas Noir (the anthology of stories published by Akashic Books) author friends, pictured here in front of the book store. My partner in crime, Detective Betty, was the influencer in my piece, “Coincidences Can Kill You.”

Detective Betty weighs in on the Wild Detectives: Okay, first of all, how can I not like the name? I’m a detective and I’m wild, so there’s that. Secondly, what’s better than reading a good book? Answer, a good book accompanied by a great cup of coffee or glass of wine, shared with friends. And thirdly, they often have music in the backyard, under the stars of Big D. Look for me. I’ll be the one with the bright red hair, wearing the burgundy Doc Martens, clasping some renegade author’s book in my hand and looking absurdly happy.

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/29/dallas-by-day-the-wild-detectives-book-store/feed/0Dallas By Night – Trinity Groveshttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/15/dallas-by-night-trinity-groves/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/15/dallas-by-night-trinity-groves/#respondMon, 15 Jun 2015 19:08:31 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4621 A quick drive over the Margaret Hunt Hill Suspension Bridge will bring you to Trinity Groves, created by a consortium of investors, including Phil Romano. The 15 ...

A quick drive over the Margaret Hunt Hill Suspension Bridge will bring you to Trinity Groves, created by a consortium of investors, including Phil Romano. The 15 acre destination is located next to the Trinity River and already boasts a tempting array of restaurants, many with patio seating, a brewery and a growing number of retail shops. Ambitious plans are in the works to build luxury, high-rise apartments. More modest homes in the area are undergoing refurbishment by young professionals and new families with an appreciation for the Trinity Renaissance.

On weekends there are often crowds of people along the Continental Avenue Bridge, strolling or jogging with their children and assorted pets. Recently, due to the torrential spring rains, the view of the river is awe-inspiring, with the water nudging past the 40-foot major flood stage. The views of the city skyline are great; visiting families will find kid-friendly playgrounds along the way, and food trucks of every kind.

I recently visited Babb Bros. BBQ and Blues with my partner in crime, Detective Betty Rhyzyk. Babb Bros. was used as the blueprint for the fictional restaurant, Babcock’s BBQ, referred to in my upcoming book (tentative title: Reaping The Grim, to be published in 2016). Det. Betty loves the food at Babb Bros., but what she especially loves is the music. The night we were there the Zac Harmon Band played and blew the roof off with their raucous, sometimes naughty, always infectious blues tunes.

Det. Betty weighs in on the Trinity crime scene: “Actually, there’s not a lot of crime here. Petty theft, the occasional drug traffic with the usual suspects. We do a lot of shift patrol out along the public areas which keeps it clean. A few years back, though, some guy shot a 14-foot, 900 pound alligator that was crawling out of the river at night, eating a rancher’s cows. But, you know. . .that was a ways from here. I wouldn’t be too afraid of alligators in Big D. Sharks, yes. Gators, no.”

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2015/06/15/dallas-by-night-trinity-groves/feed/0Summer Reading List, with a bitehttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2014/06/18/summer-reading-list-with-a-bite/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2014/06/18/summer-reading-list-with-a-bite/#commentsWed, 18 Jun 2014 15:17:00 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4569Growing up in Texas, I was always fascinated with books of Western or Texas lore. Whereas a lot of my childhood friends were reading Nancy Drew and National Velvet, I ...

Growing up in Texas, I was always fascinated with books of Western or Texas lore. Whereas a lot of my childhood friends were reading Nancy Drew and National Velvet, I loved the more adventurous and dangerous novels by Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey, and the stories of J. Frank Dobie. As I got older, two of my favorite authors became Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. Their Lonesome Dove and Border Trilogy became classics of the genre. Recently, I’ve read some novels and one non-fiction book that carry the spirit of the Western myth in their teeth. The first of my weekly recommendations is:

The Thicket, by Joe Lansdale. One of my favorite reads of last year, and a finalist for the American Library Association’s top pick of historical fiction in 2014. Set in East Texas at the turn of the century, a young Jack Parker, is orphaned through a string of tragic events. His lot is further worsened by being set upon by a group of bank robbers who kill his grandfather and kidnap his younger sister, Lula. Jack’s search to recover his sister is aided by a charismatic, bounty hunting dwarf named Shorty and his crew. In Lansdale’s capable hands, East Texas is painted as a wild and untamed place, inhabited with rich, complex characters, by turns dark and funny. I especially loved the tale-telling Shorty, recognizing in his mannerisms and speech the authentic expressions of the true sons and daughters of the Big Thicket. If you loved the down and dirty, take-no-prisoners world of Deadwood, you’ll love this novel.

]]>http://www.kathleenkent.com/2014/06/18/summer-reading-list-with-a-bite/feed/1Dallas By Night: Cirque du Burlesquehttp://www.kathleenkent.com/2014/03/24/dallas-by-night-cirque-du-burlesque/
http://www.kathleenkent.com/2014/03/24/dallas-by-night-cirque-du-burlesque/#respondMon, 24 Mar 2014 14:48:10 +0000http://www.kathleenkent.com/?p=4546The iconic Lakewood movie palace, built in 1938, is the last single screen movie theater still in its near-original condition left in Dallas. It still shows movies but also hosts ...

]]>The iconic Lakewood movie palace, built in 1938, is the last single screen movie theater still in its near-original condition left in Dallas. It still shows movies but also hosts concerts, dances and special corporate events. It’s also the site of a twice monthly burlesque event the first and third Friday of every month. Billed as the largest burlesque show in Texas, it features performers with names such as Minxie & MT Molotov, Miss Malicious, and Sweet Darla Danger. Some of the performers specialize in aerial acts, fire breathing, and comedy sketches, but, most of all, the ladies do burlesque. Good ole fashioned, retro, Betty-Page, tease ’em and please ’em strip tease. The photograph below is of the stage, sans the ladies, and is also a tease

The acts, however suggestive, are anything but tawdry, and the performances abound with humor and a sly, almost wholesome naughtiness. Some of the best fun, though, lies in watching the audience. It’s a mixed crowd, some couples, dressed in their weekend best—the man next to me wore an enormous cowboy hat and boots, emitting rebel yells anytime a new performer walked onto the stage—but the majority of the audience were women: bachelorette parties (!), and lots of women who just happen to like women.

Detective Betty says this about the Cirque: I find something uniquely satisfying about seeing this little bit of daring theater nestled in the heart of conventional, family oriented Lakewood. The only crime here is that the theater serves no food. So I would suggest the Al-Amir Lebanese restaurant in Addison beforehand. They have belly dancers on the weekend. And the food is great.

]]>In 1946 nearly 8,000 cubic yards of earth and rock were moved to sculpt the hill site north of Oak Cliff to build the Belmont Hotel, allowing guests unparalleled views of the Dallas skyline. Charles Dilbeck, the famed, self-taught Dallas architect, designed the building, part of the new Art Moderne movement—smooth horizontal lines, soft rounded corners, and stucco facades. Very California, mucho Betty Grable.

Here’s what the hotel looked like in the 1950’s, and a lot of energy, time and money was put into the refurbishment of the hotel in 2005. There continues to be some crime in the nearby environs (most of it south, between I30 and I35)—which is why I went there tagging along after Detective Betty who was looking into a case—but the coolness factor, the rediscovery of vintage buildings and real estate, has brought money and prestige into the area. And the Hotel Belmont has risen from the ashes to be one of the coolest, boutique hotels, bar and restaurant in Dallas.

Detective Betty offers this about nearby Smoke Restaurant:I love the food and the atmosphere in this restaurant. Very LA Confidential. I always make my reservations under the name Rollo Tomasi.

]]>What do bikers, octogenarians, painters, long-time musicians, neighborhood moms and college students have in common—at least in Lakewood, Dallas? If you’ve ever been to The Goat, “Your Neighborhood Blues Bar”, down at the end of Gaston on Karaoke night, you’d know the answer to that question.

I hadn’t been to the place in years and, being a Monday night at eight o’clock, it was still pretty empty. The regular blues band, made up primarily of Tony DeCicco and Perry Jones, was just getting set up and there were only a few regulars at the bar, but by the time I left an hour later people were starting to trickle in. I’m sure that by ten o’clock it would be rocking.

The last time I had come to The Goat, it was a Wednesday evening, Karaoke night, and what had amazed me was the diversity of people playing pool, singing, dancing and drinking beer peacefully together, no hassles, no loud judgement calls. There was a local motorcycle club in one corner, a group of Mexican lawn workers in another, a gaggle of women “of a certain age” at the bar, young college-aged men trying diligently to pick them up, and a few (loudly and constantly self-proclaimed) “Dykes on a mission” giving some of the best renditions of KD Lang songs outside of Nashville.

There are so few places where the masses mingle in such an egalitarian way. Part of it is good music, a common denominator like no other. Part of it is the way the owners refuse to be exclusionary in their attitudes—“Hey, you’re nice to us, so we’ll be nice to you”— aesthetics and decor (a sort of Baltimore Harbor Renaissance). And part of it is just the je nais se quoi of cool.

Detective Betty chimes in: “I come here sometimes with my work partner, Seth, to unwind. It takes a few beers to get him going, but he knocks out a version of Roky Erickson’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me” that will knock your socks off.”